Month: December 2015

Well, it’s that time of the year again…where I try and dredge up some goals for the year. In my 20s and 30s I had heaps of goals – I had a 5-year plan and a 10-year plan and I revised them each year as I ticked things off. Life is much more stable now, and it’s harder to think of what my goals are beyond the things that everyone wants – success in my career, a comfortable life, a happy family, travel.

If my goals were to be things that I knew I could achieve in the coming year (i.e. things I know that I will actually do), they would go something like this:

Buy all the Apple-y things

Go to the gym a lot

Spend a lot of time at the ice rink – playing hockey and supporting others

Spend lots of quality time with my beautiful children and grandchildren

Try and carve out space for relaxation but not really succeed, realise that relaxation is not really my thing

I struggle so much with the relaxation thing. My husband often tells me in a very stern tone that I need to slow down, not do too much, sit down and relax. And I really try. Sometimes I manage it – I can go hours (well, hour) without doing anything. But the truth is that I am just an ‘on-the-go’ person. It’s not that I’m bored if I’m not doing stuff, I just feel like I’m wasting time to be sitting around. I only have so many heartbeats left and I don’t want spend them watching the world go by. So this year I resolve not to worry about this. I will be as active as I feel I need to be! The only condition I’ll add to this is that I would like to spend more time at home.

Last year I resolved to spend more time at home … and then spent most of the year travelling to and from Auckland. It’s like fate was laughing in my face. “Spend more time at home? HAHAHA, no – spend more time EVERYWHERE ELSE!”. Less travel and more time at home in the evenings in 2016 would be nice.

Stephen and I have financial and career goals that are slowly taking shape, so I am excited about those. They are not things that I will document here – until they start to happen anyway!

So I guess what I’m saying is that my goal for 2016 is to do whatever I feel like doing. That sounds achievable.

All year, I’ve been working hard out to increase my level of activity and reduce my waistline. I blogged about it in June – HERE.

As I said in June, my weight slowly crept up and my fitness declined since I started doing roller derby. So the start of this year I hit the gym hard and discovered the joys (and pain) of RPM.

Since then (I waited for the weather to warm up!) I’ve thrown running back into the mix too. I’ve loved running ever since I first started, now over 10 years ago. No derby, plus good stretching, massage, and yoga has helped my back issues to the point that I’ve been able to run again in the last three months, and I am so happy! I’m keeping it low-key at the moment, 30 mins a couple of times a week. It’s so good to be back into it though.

So I typically do between 30-120 minutes of exercise six days a week, I eat (fairly) well, and in the past six months my weight-loss has slowed – I’ve now lost 14 kilograms since December 2014 (it was 10kgs in June).

Here’s the funny thing. My weight-loss seems to have stopped at exactly the same point it did last time I lost weight 10 or so years ago. Like, exactly the same number. And I’ve been the same weight (give or take a few 100 grams here and there) for the past three months.

It’s a bit frustrating, because having been 82 kilograms for so many years, I like the idea of being 70-something. But my body has other ideas! I know the numbers don’t really matter, but it’s something I’ve focussed on because it’s a measurable goal that I can reach for. But getting to a 70-something goal would mean cutting out (yet more) foods from my diet. I’m reluctant to do that.